"A very stylish pair of sunglasses with a color camera brilliantly hidden within the frame to give color pictures and exceptionally clear audio, all recorded on to a personal video recorder." Frames size is 510x492 (NTSC) or 500x582(PAL).

September 28, 2007

I wanted a peak at Motionwork's PowerPoint slides from “Introduction to After Effects” E-Seminar online, but don't have Microsoft software on this old Mac. Microsoft doesn't have a PowerPoint viewer for OS X, but Google Docs does have a new presentations feature that will let you see the file after you log in to a Google account and upload the file.

Update: Layers magazine Tip of the Day 16 Oct 2007 adds 'Spiraling Circles,'"Here's a cool trick that's the result of a conversation with my friend, GarySped, from the Layers Forum. Click on your Artboard with the Ellipse tool (L) and in the window that opens, make the Width 1.25". Then click on the word "Height" and fill in the same value, and then press OK. With this newly drawn circle still selected, go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform. In the window that opens, type in the following specs: 80% for both Horizontal and Vertical Scale; 1.0158" for both Horizontal and Vertical Move; 60 for Rotate Angle; and 25 for the Number of Copies. Now click OK to make the circle spiral. Cool trick Gary!"

"The Navy plans to spend $600,000 to obscure a San Diego-area building complex that happens to be shaped like a swastika. The buildings have been around since the 1960s and for years no one seemed to mind, but that was before the advent of Google Earth."

September 26, 2007

StrongMocha reports that Andrew Kramer is working on a new plug-in called Twitch that allows you to do light flash, scale, jerk, blur, slide and blur quickly. There's a preview movie if you can't wait.

September 25, 2007

Studio Monthly magazine offers free subscriptions. Most of the articles appears online at Studio Daily, but you might want a hard copy. It's hardly news but most industry magazines also have free subscriptions.

Morphing is a feature that comes up regularly on a variety of forums and e-mail lists, and this post summarizes a few recent threads. The grandaddy of 2D morphing programs was Elastic Reality, which was discontinued by Avid in 1999. ER might still work in Windows, but more advanced morphing features later showed up in Avid Media Illusion, Avid|DS, Softimage|XSI.

There were a large number of morphing apps created after this effect became popular. Free ones include WinMorph (Windows) and MorphX (Mac), and there's many more but mostly for morphing between stills. There's even a Final Cut Studio plug-in called Morphing FX from CHV-electronics, but it's currently only working in Motion 2+, since the current version of Final Cut Pro does not fully comply to Apple's FxPlug spec.

After Effects has several tools to to do different types of morphs. The main tool is the Reshape filter, but there's also basic mask/text/Shape interpolation, the Mesh Warp filter, and even AE 8's new puppet tool tool which might come in handy. If you're doing text/mask interpolation don't forget adjustable Smart Mask Interpolation and the Set First Vertex command. Chris Zwar did a tutorial for Creative Cow in an earlier version of AE that describes the process using the Reshape filter, which is also covered in books by Trish & Chris Meyer and Mark Christiansen.Yet another option within AE is a third-party filter RevisionFX Re:Flex that has some more advanced features and perhaps better quality.

I haven't been paying attention lately but the last morphing I remember was in a Rolling Stones video; it seemed to involve 3D moves and frame rate interpolation too, which itself should work better now with optical flow now in common products by Adobe and Apple. Even then Effects Fueled by the Desire to be Seamless (FxGuide) is a lot more complicated now.

"As you noted, we wrote up a few pages on it in Creating Motion Graphics Volume 2 (for those with copies, in the 3rd edition, its pages 82-85; in the new 1-volume 4th edition, it will be pages 180-183). It comes with several example exercises. Here's a quick boil-down:- Align the First Vertex Point at a similar position on the two shapes, and enable First Verticies Match- Use Linear Vertex Paths: disabling gives more organic interpolation (especially good for rotating objects), although it can also result in wild swings; enabling will be less twisty- Bending Resistance: low = more fluid; higher = maintain a more rigid, geometric shape- Matching Method: Auto works well; use Curve for organic, Polyline for geometric- Add Mask Vertices: the higher, the more accurate the interpolation; same for Quality- Use 1:1 Vertex: disable.There's no one magic setting; just these general rules for stiff/fluid, and experiment/tweak from there."

Chris Roger adds: "Start with simple text morph of the letter "A" to "B" to learn. Create text/outlines in IL and paste into mask keyframes. Make sure the letters have same number of points. Add points with Pen Tool. This will help a more fluid transition. Be sure to define the First Vertex."

from John Dowdell: "MotionDSP's FixMyMovie.com, which showed technology demos last year of removing capture/compression artifacts from a mobile video stream, has not only gone live, but already supports the H.264 video in the Moviestar beta." MovieStar is the project name of the Flash 9 player that supports H.264; clips must less than 20 MB and a 352 x 288 pixels.

The press releases MotionDSP declare other interesting possibilities in video enhancement but beyond this beta launch they've really only announced CIA funding through In-Q-TEL.

September 20, 2007

Dale Bradshaw continues update his work on FCPToAE, his application for OSX 10.4+ designed to create a .jsx file from a Final Cut XML file for import into After Effects, saving you the hassle of scripting the different parts yourself.

Update from comments by News Videographer: Video news releases or VNRs (also referred to as fake TV news) are slippery. I think those pieces should be acknowledged if used for more than free stock footage. But I haven't thought deeply beyond pondering things like the Sourcewatch article.

Alan Shisko has 2 new tutorial movies. one shows you how to live link layer masks to a master and one that shows "you CAN cast shadows from your After Effects layers 'onto' imagery rendered" in a 3D program.

September 18, 2007

Many are familiar with Zaxwerks Invigorator from previous bundles with AE, but like me might lose touch with the latest features in what Zax calls Invigorator Pro.

Invigorator Pro will give you the basic primitives, which are comp camera and comp light aware, and can import 3D models from 3d programs. You can also get visible 3D paths, function curve control, animation assistants and even expression-based control over 3D animations. Warping is done in a separate filter, 3D Warp. Intersections and other AE-specific features might have to wait for the AE team.

FreshDV notes a fix in the Mac QuickTime 7.2 update, where "Apple has added a new tickbox in the Quicktime Preferences labeled 'Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility,' with the description 'When enabled, video is not displayed using ColorSync. Source colors are read with the 2.2 gamma and are displayed in a color space with 1.8 gamma.'"

Unfortunately, gamma behavior is not consistently handled for all codecs (e.g., DVCProHD) on all platforms (or even the "visual context" of OpenGL or Direct3D in QT). Gamma tags have not always attached or read, and problems seem to be Apple's rather than something caused by Adobe's MediaCore file handling and conversion components. One issue was fixed by AE 8.0.1, because with FCP Studio 2, Apple's Uncompressed 4:2:2 10-bit QuickTime codec reads and writes pixel data differently than prior versions of the codec.

In CS3 Adobe attempted to deal with gamma changes across platforms by adding a switch in Project Settings->Color Management called "Match Legacy After Effects QuickTime Gamma Adjustments." The Legacy QT checkbox defaults to On when you open a legacy project. Generally keeping color management off and the Legacy switch on will keep things as they were in AE 7, except on Mac OS running on a PowerPC processor, where QuickTime codecs are used for some formats (including DV, 2vuy, and v210), whether or not you select Match Legacy.

Using Match Legacy mostly works fine, except when cross-platform round-tripping. Some reports have claimed acceptable gamma matches in problem situations by enabling Color Management with the project working space set to sRGB, but that could just be just for previewing files in QT Player.

There seems to be uncertainty here (from the armchair) whether the new Quicktime preference will make gamma the same in FCP, QT Player, and other apps for all codecs, but things will probably be clarified or cleared up soon for the few problematic situations.

Update:Martin Baker added a comment to the FreshDV article: "This preference just changes the display of movies in QuickTime Player so they match the appearance in FCP’s Viewer or Canvas. In FCP6, Apple extended the import gamma preference (User Preferences > Editing tab) to affect movies as well as stills and you can also change the gamma of a clip individually in the Browser."

If AE 7 won't launch, there could be a number of problems according to Adobe support docs. If you get the error below you have a CS3-related problem and probably have a CS3-specific plug-in installed that'll have to be pulled:../../../AE_SDK_CS3/Examples/Headers/SuiteHelper.h:22:failed assertion 'false'

SAFE is holding a continuing "Food and Farming Film Festival" in Berkeley this fall. Sponsored by Food First, CUESA, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and others, these documentary movies are accompanied by panel discussions and presentations by filmmakers and authors like Michael Pollan.

For more on food check out Bay Area Bites (good links) and The Ethicurean (who wants to chew the right thing). Good food-oriented documentaries include:

Prepping spots for delivery to a TV station was the topic of a recent thread on the AE-List. Paraphrasing, it was noted that while BetaSP is disappearing from post houses, many TV stations and cable operators still require BetaSP, or DVCpro. Many are also using services like DG FastChannel, and the networks and major cable channels are also taking Digibeta. Few are taking digital files, but in any case it's best to check early for specific delivery requirements.

Capria.TV notes that "though most video pros don’t deliver PBS programs to the network on a regular basis, the PBS spec is commonly used as a benchmark throughout the industry." Frank adds links to PBS Red Book guidelines and definitions in his post New PBS Tech Specs.

Flowseeker notes unique aspects of the free AE filter Knoll Unmult and says the current version is 32-bpc and Mac-Intel native. A Windows version should have been available but wouldn't download when I tried from Knoll Unmult.

Until Unmult is available for Windows, you can use Xmult from Fandev, which is also free and 32-bit capable.

Jeff also likes his Launch Pad script for "its coolness and ability to associate icons with scripts," and also he's posted screenshots of some of his updated scripts at Flickr. Numerous other script and expression resources were listed in an earlier post Scripts Galore and as Panels in AE8.

September 14, 2007

Artbeats Tips N Tricks is a substantial collection of After Effects tutorials that includes many from Trish & Chris Meyer. If you register with Artbeats, you'll occasional free sample footage, a free subscription to the Artbeats eNewsletter, and/or a free copy of the latest Artbeats Demo Reel & Training DVD.

September 12, 2007

The American military is divided over Iraq policy. It's being reported that General Petraeus' boss Admiral Fallon holds him in very low regard (calling Petraeus a boot-licker would be kinder than what the CENTCOM boss said).

Some military men thought you sometimes had to destroy a village to save it, but in this New Age/World Order we might have to send the aliens back to the stoned age to bring freedom and democracy to a land.

TechCrunch asks Will Joost Address The Copycats? but will Adobe address them too in Adobe Media Player? Or will all the good stuff be under the hood for advertisers? I think Apple's movie player is still the best for users (global spacebar stop, frame advance with arrows, etc.), though many Microsoft-oriented engineers can't accept that. In the past some engineers even refused to make an up arrow raise a numeric value (not lower), because that was a "Mac" UI convention and not in Microsoft MFC!

September 8, 2007

MPEG Streamclip is a free video converter, player, editor for MPEG, QuickTime, transport streams, iPod. And now it is a DivX editor and encoding machine, and even a stream and YouTube downloader.

As a DVD ripper MPEG Streamclip is commonly used, and it "lets you visually set the In and Out points for the conversion so you can convert just the part of the file you are interested in, and also cut commercials and other unwanted parts, or edit the stream and join two streams with Cut/Copy/Paste."

A notch above in extraction features and some cost is Cinematize2 from Miraizon, which available for both Mac and Windows.

Note: MPEG Clipstream is not limited to exporting QuickTime; look under File>Export/Convert/Demux.

You can use the MPEG data on your DVD in Premiere without transcoding since Premiere can import .MPG files. Just copy the .VOB files from an unprotected DVD to a hard drive and rename them to .MPG, then import that into Premiere.

If you can't decode (ie, see) MPEG files then you have problems. Installing a codec pack like "K-Lite" should do the trick. Also Premiere Elements and other editors like Vegas and Liquid import from DVD, so you can download a tryout version and check it out.

from The Genesis Project:"There is a ton of announcements from Adobe today as we kick off both Photoshop World and IBC. The two bigs ones for me are the announcement of P2/MXF support in Premiere Pro [there's no transcoding or rewrapping] and Audition 3 [Windows-only, but picks up UI parts of Soundbooth]."

Good news for Premiere users. Oddly, Adobe lists the P2 news in the upgrade section of Premiere CS3.

September 4, 2007

A Universal Color Metadata format is what Stu Maschwitz thinks will help control problems associated with multiple color grading passes and format conversions on various systems on the same project. Seems like a longshot for any company "A" when there's so much confusion about file formats, EDL/project compatibility, managing an actual color management system (like AE) and even when to "Use Legacy QT Default" in AE.

If you've got a project that you need to show to a few people, and only them, there are a number of ways to do this. A range of solutions, some free and private, were discussed in a previous post,Review and approval.

September 3, 2007

Good basic advice from SF Cutters' Cutter-Talk:>> I digitized the footage as DVCPRO50 widescreen, and it looks excellent, but when I go to chroma key it, I end up with stong jaggies on all moving edges.>>

If the "strong jaggies on moving edges" are simply the same sort of every-other-line jaggies you see on interlaced footage (jaggies move smoothly with the edge and are jagged in proportion to the amount of motion), don't worry about it (as long as the target output is interlaced).

If instead these are a sort of "fixed pattern steppy edge" where the edges of the key have discrete, coarse locations, with remain stationary as the edge moves within a 2-pixel radius, then it's a chroma subsampling issue, and you should try the following things:

1) Make sure you apply the "Chroma smoothing - 4:2:2" filter as the first effect on the source clip. If you're using FCP's standard keyers this makes a huge difference.

2) If interlaced, make sure you're viewing the rendered result on an interlaced CRT, not the Mac's screen, nor a flat panel with dodgy deinterlacing.

2a) You realize, I hope, that the FCP screen only ever gives you something even remotely close to a pixel-by-pixel-accurate view when the Canvas is at 100%?

3) Play with the edge parameters in whatever keyer you're using.

I've had excellent results (faster to set up and superior quality) using DV Garage's DV Matte Pro (no involvement with DV Garage except as an early beta tester and now as a paying customer).

Maltaannon video tutorials are back up and there's several interesting tutorials available besides Simple Object Removal. Maltanon sometimes uses its own CustomEffects, presets with expressions that look and behave like standard plugins -- and require a DLL install.

Mashable has a story on BlipBack, a new video comment widget that lets you or your visitors record short video comments directly to your web page. Blipback also can receive video messages from cell phones, "so if you have a video enabled phone you can post directly to your widget while out and about or hand out the address to your friends and family and they can post to your page while they are out."

I can imagine several services for post production with modifications to services like this, or improvements to various review and approval solutions and planning systems like CeltX. A small market, high cost, and upload bandwidth are obstacles though. Then again since there are at least 9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network each freelancer can tailor a network space to a range of purposes. Live video is easier now to implement and should soon be part of the mix.

Adobe's Bridge Home and purchase of Scene7 signals the importance of services. That's not quite as big as Google and Microsoft infrastructure-building moves but still interesting, and we have to wait a bit more before Adobe Media Player features and other services are announced.